Category Archives: Home Theater

What are your HTPC requirements?

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Part two of my multi part series which was again inspired by this post from Brent Evans of Geektonic. Today I am covering the ever changing requirements for my HTPC and home media system. The many renditions of those requirements and how significant changes can be impacted by significant others in your house hold. In other words, keeping the system you have in place as high on WAF as possible.

Home Theater PC (HTPC) requirements

As Brent, the requirements in my home, and how we consume media and how we interact with the systems in place have evolved over the years. In the beginning all I was doing is using my htpc for DVD playback, and with that the only time my wife sat down to watch a movie was when I was with her, so I was always there to put a movie in to play it. Over the years the requirements and main use for the HTPC in our house hold moved away from being a dedicated DVD jukebox to a full blown HD DVR as well. With that in mind here are some of the main requirements for the system I have put in place.

 

  • Stability – In my house hold stability and ease of use are the key factors. For my family, being able to use the system and not have to call me up or pull me away from something has forced me to play the “Custom Installer” role and put forth some clearly defined rules and make sure something works 100% before I introduce it into our home.
  • Ease of use - I have had to come up with solutions to make our bedroom, family room (both of which run media center extenders) and our Home Theater experience as easy to use as possible. If my wife can’t operate it without my assistance she will never use it again.
  • Clean install / Custom install – WAF requires no wires. No wires absolutely anywhere in plain sight. If I can not install something and hide the wires it gets put on the chopping block instantly. So I have learned how to design my system with as little foot print as possible.
  • Instant gratification - Right now in that situation it requires me to keep the media center extender running all the time from 6am to midnight. I currently am playing around with event ghost and IP controls to send power on and power off commands to the extenders so that when my family wants to use it, it is ready to go and they don’t have to wait for it to boot up and connect to the pc. Not having to turn the extender on and wait for it to turn on is one thing my wife requires. She wont use the system if she has to wait for something to boot up, which is one of the reasons I think she doesn’t like any of the blu ray or hd dvd players I have had. To solve that I keep the extender on as much as possible, and all my wife has to do it turn the power on the tv and she is using the extender right away.
  • HTPC must act like a STB – Being able to have a system that turns on every single time, works like it should, and doesn’t look like a PC in any way shape or form is a must for me and my family. My wife needs to be able to just turn the tv on, and it should work, and not have to mess with a keyboard or a mouse, it should never look like a pc or work like a pc, it needs to run as much like a set top box as possible.
  • Great Looking User Interface – I am a sucker for a good looking interface. To me I can’t stand using SageTV or other applications, which is why I use Vista Media Center and now Windows 7. The user interface that media center provides is like none other, which is what I love about it. It is clean, easy to use, and flows really well.
  • Low Cost – If you have recently listened to the round table podcast on Entertainment 2.0, one of the discussions we had was about cost. I want to keep my inner “thrifty” side alive and kicking so going the media center route, keeps in that tradition as it comes with Vista and now Windows 7. Media Center has a large backing of other corporate hardware so media center extenders are readily available and can be had in most cases for nearly $50 per extender.
  • DVR requirements – As you know my HTPC is my DVR and with that in mind I have to abide by some rules so that it stays high on WAF. In Brent’s post he goes on to list some “must haves” in his post, of Brent’s list for his HTPC/DVR requirements, the two that are really must haves for my house hold is commercial skipping and extenders.
    • Commercial skipping – My wife can live without Commercial skipping. When I was testing out windows 7 my wife had commented on why the commercials were still there and how she liked not having to use the remote to skip commercials. Eventually she got tired of having to do the 30 sec skip during the commercials, she loved having the auto commercial skip feature which surprised me when she told me she wanted it back. Vary rarely will I get a request for “technology” or a gadget from my wife, but commercial skipping what one thing my wife absolutely needed.
    • Video Resume / Follow me / Multi-room viewing – Being able to access the DVR’d content on any TV in my home. As Brent calls it, “follow me” is part of the multi-room experience and involves the HTPC/Server and extenders of sorts (see media center extenders for more info).
    • Record up to 4 shows at a single time – I currently have 10 tuner cards setup on my HTPC. 6 HD ATSC and 4 SD NTSC tuners. At any given night during the week between my wife’s DVR needs and my own, we can use up to as many as 4 HD tuners at one single time.
    • Always on / Always working
  • Media Center Extenders – Video resume (or follow me as Brent calls it) We generally will sit down to dinner and watch a few shows while making dinner and getting ready to sit down. So being able to pull up a tv show on the extender start watch tv, then pause/stop playback after a while. We will then, depending on what is going on, move down into a home theater/media room in our basement and on the HTPC down there pick back up right where we left off on the extender in the family room. Being able to start watching a tv show and then move to a different tv and continue watching the same thing right where you left off is one of the biggest used features of our setup in our home, commercial skipping being a close second.
  • Movies – Easy to use, easy to navigate, and great looking interface with cover art. When building my HTPC I discovered a customer installer system called kaleidescape which backed up movies to hard drive and provided a nice custom interface for cataloging movies and providing them in a nice easy to use gui. With that in Mind I found a great plugin for Media Center that gave me part of what I was looking for, and keep with my “Thirfy” side. I ended up going with My Movies plugin for media center and it gives me a great user interface for cataloging my dvd collection. Just recently the developer of My Movies has added a windows home server plug-in that allows me to offload the database and server portion of my movies to my WHS box so that I can lessen the resources on my HTPC.

 

Home Theater / Media Room requirements

Over the years one of my other passions that grew along with my HTPC fixation, was that of Home Theaters. While in college I purchased my first DVD player, as well as my first surround sound systems. My roommates and I would spend hours watching movies and playing video games with the surround sound. So when I graduated and had time and of course the income to support such a hobby I set out to build my own dedicated home theater / home media entertainment room. While I was researching and designing my space, I started seeing what others were doing with their setups, and over time I started seeing a pattern of “things I would have done differently” so with that I put forth some requirements of my own, for my space, which slowly merged into other areas of my home as well.

  • One Remote to rule them all – Being the non-original person that I am, I had to “borrow” this headline from Brent. I am slowly working my way into home automation, and doing TCP/IP based controls for my media center and media center extender. I am also working on a touch screen based control system for my home theater, however for now I follow the lord of the rings motto and follow the “One Remote to Rule them all” mantra. I have several Logitech Harmony remotes in my home. In my bedroom I run a Logitech Harmony 720, in my family room I run a Harmony 550, and in my basement theater room I run a Harmony 680 which will soon get replaced my a Harmony one remote. Being able to control activities and control several devices with the basic functions on the remote makes it much easier to use however they all still have one short fall, and that is devices that don’t have discrete IR commands and those remote activities that take a while to run, my wife can’t understand that you have to hold and and continue pointing the remote while it completes all of the activity functions before you can set it back down. My goal is to eventually replace that with a one touch button on a touch screen interface for my home theater control and home automation system but right now because of cost that project is still in testing and conceptual design phase.
  • One Box to play it all – My HTPC. My ultimate goal in the end is to have a single box to be able to play back any content I throw at it. Blu Ray, HD DVD, DVD, SACD, DVD Audio, mp3, flac, ogg, flash video, streaming audio, video games, streaming video sites (hulu, netflix, ect…). Be my main DVR, DVD juke box, music juke box, you name it, it can do it. Up until now, I do have that, but currently its not in an easy to use, all in one, native interface (like media center) its close but its not all there yet. Like the saying goes, “jack of all trades, but master of none” is what the HTPC is, for me I’ve learned to live with its short comings, like Brent does with SageTV and how ugly it is ;) but he has chosen to live with SageTV because its is a master at playing back lots of content, and is a great DVR app, but its not as good looking and doesn’t flow together as easy as Media Center does. So to each is their own and with HTPC’s you have to give a little to get what you want some times.
  • All equipment must work at all times - That is one of the biggest rules of the roost when it comes to my family, or hell will break loose in my house hold (most of the time from me out of frustration). If something doesn’t work all the time when it is called upon, major frustration will ensue. I pride myself on keeping a system that is 100% self built, self installed, run with 99.99999999% uptime. In the last 2 years of running my most recent HTPC setup I have only had a 4 day down time which was due to a guide data issue in Vista Media Center, for those that follow me on twitter, you knew what I went through. For those that use a HTPC as a DVR you know that not having a guide data will make the setup virtual unusable.
  • Music available anywhere – Between the HTPC, the media center extenders and the Squeezebox in the family room we have the ability to access our music collection anywhere in our home.
  • Clean / Clutter free Install – This gets back to my “custom installer” mentality. When building my Home Theater and installing the flat panel tv’s in my home I wanted the installs to be as clean as possible and look almost professional.

 

Over all these are just the main features I look for in my HTPC requirements, every one who uses a HTPC will eventually find out their own requirements through trial and error, and will eventually come up with a great combo of software, hardware, settings and configuration to the point they can then use their HTPC day in and day out without issue, the above points are what work for me. Stay tuned for the next segment of these series of posts which next time I will re-hash my current HTPC and extender setup, how I use the setup day to day and will go over some things on what I would change or do differently if I could.

 

- Josh

The Types of HTPC Enthusiasts… Which am I?

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Yesterday Brent Evans of Geektonic posted up a story “Media Gadget Nirvana – How I Use my Home Theater PC” which is partly inspired by a blog post Ben Drawbaugh did  “How I use Windows Media Center”. So with that I wanted to take this time to re-hash my htpc and whs setup, home automation, home theater, and the hardware and software configurations for each and dive a little more into my every day use with each system.

 

I began writing this piece and it took on a life of its own so to break it up and be a little more manageable to read I will be doing a several part series. This first series will be as the title says is about the different types of HTPC enthusiasts. To start out Brent talks about three types of HTPC enthusiasts and I wanted to keep the same list and go in depth on each one and how I relate to each type.

 

  1. The Dabbler/Experimenter
  2. The Thrifty Enthusiast
  3. DIY Custom Installer Enthusiast

 

From my perspective as well my wife’s point of view I can definitely be labeled in all three categories. I love to Dabble and Experiment with things, or as my wife likes to call it “I Putz”. I always try to do things on the cheap, I like to be “Thrifty” with any number of projects I am working on at any given time, and that easily rolls into my HTPC enthusiasm. I also like to keep things custom, if its my old modded ford focus, or my home theater and my media center extender environment I like to keep things custom looking to get the “man I wish I had that” comment from house guests. All in all I would consider myself an all around HTPC enthusiast.

 

The Dabbler and Experimenter: I love being able to change settings, find new things, find easier ways to do things. I like to be able to find new and more instersting ways to play back a media file, or find a new plugin for media center. In my free time I am always playing around with my “test htpc” which I am currently running windows 7 so that I can learn about 7MC and figure out its quirks. I mostly do this because I want my main HTPC/DVR system to be rock solid, stable, and work 100% of the time. I am always learning how to stream line my system, install only the essential pieces of software and drivers and codecs to get what I need to get the job done. To do this I have a “test” HTPC I use to test out all my settings, changes, software, plug-ins before I install them on my “production” HTPC. To most people I am a little crazy and that I take my HTPC way too seriously, I will admit in most cases yes, but for me I want things to work, and work well, so I make sure that the HTPC never gets anything installed or changed without making sure it works right, that way I know I have a stable HTPC that is the ultimate DVR for my home.

 

The Thrifty Enthusiast: I would also consider myself a “Thrifty Enthusiast” as well. I know there are much easier, more stable, better looking, ways of doing distributed video and audio systems, however for me they are way more expensive than I am willing to spend to get what I want out of my entertainment system. With my HTPC I am able to DVR ota ATSC HD, as well as NTSC sd cable tv, stream live and or recorded tv shows from my HTPC to any tv in my home via media center extenders. With the same extenders I am also able to watch downloaded videos, movies and tv shows. I am able to listen to music, podcasts, or any other audio on any tv in my home. I can play back family videos, do a photo slide show, look up weather reports, and look at latest news feeds  all from the same, easy to use, media center interface that is available on each and every single tv in my home.

 

DIY Custom Installer Enthusiast: Lastly I would also consider myself a “DIY Custom Installer Enthusiast” as I previously mentioned, I have my main HTPC and media center extenders on each of the tv’s in my home. I have a full gigabit network with hard wired Ethernet cables at each tv location, where I then have Linksys media center extenders that have a small, sleek, custom looking design that give me a small footprint and allows me to have a clutter free install. I like being able to keep my distributed system as clean looking as possible and still be able to move content around my home as easily as possible. Going with Vista Media Center and the Linksys Media Center extenders this gives me the best option for my needs. It allows me to keep the costs low, as each extender I purchased for under $50/each, I paid less than $50 per license of Vista Ultimate, and ran all the structured wiring and home automation equipment/devices in my home myself. Being able to accommodate my “Thrifty” side as well as my “Custom Installer” side at the same time was a huge plus. I like having gadgets, and playing around with new things, so being able to install something and have it look “Custom” but know that it didn’t cost me an arm and a leg was a huge plus.

 

As you can see I am a little bit of everything when it comes to my Enthusiast nature. Brent says he is/was the same way. I think anyone really into HTPC’s is a little of everything, but when you start out number three gets put on the back burner as you are more into modding and seeing what you can break and what you can fix and how it all works together.

 

This wraps up part one of my multi part series that I am working on. So please check back soon for more posts continuing on with the series that will eventually wrap up to “How I use my HTPC”

 

- Josh